Protest of series is planned

Delfin Vigil, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 18, 2007

A group calling itself Defend the Honor is staging a four-city protest Sunday against filmmaker Ken Burns and his PBS documentary "The War," on the grounds that the 15-hour series did not initially include interviews with Latino or American Indian veterans of World War II.

Armando Rendon, who will be leading the San Francisco protest at 2 p.m. outside KQED's studios on Mariposa Street, acknowledged that Latinos felt vindicated in April when Burns and PBS agreed to include additional footage focusing on both ethnic groups, but said it was not enough.

"That was definitely a victory, but we're still angry and feel like we've been treated like a footnote. Mainly, we want to put pressure on them to make sure nothing like that ever happens again," said Rendon, an East Bay resident and author of "The Chicano Manifesto." The other protests will be in San Diego, Austin, Texas, and San Antonio.

Burns initially declined to make any changes or additions to the World War II documentary after several prominent Latino activists complained and formed the Defend the Honor campaign in February.

In April, Burns and PBS announced they were adding additional narratives from Latino and Indian soldiers and hired Hector Galán, a Latino producer, for consultation.

Burns said on a visit to San Francisco last week that the protests reflected a "huge misunderstanding" of the film's intentions. "We never intended this to be a comprehensive film about the war." Submariners aren't represented, he said. Neither are women who served in the military or Filipino Americans. No Latinos came forward, he said, when the call for interviews went out in four cities.

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